Fixing the Founding

While devotion to the U.S. Constitution has always been a defining mark of traditionalist conservatism, traditionalists nevertheless tend to see the Constitution as flawed in at least one key respect. It is that the Constitution only lays out the procedural frame of government, without any reference to the particular nature of the society—we might say the small “c” constitution of the society—for which that government exists. This made complete sense to the Founders, as the federal government only served limited purposes affecting the entire Union, primarily national defense, foreign relations, and interstate commerce, while most substantive social issues such as property law, criminal law, marriage law, the franchise, citizenship, slavery (and later segregation), religion, laws affecting individual behavior, even laws against sedition, were all handled at the state and local level.

The down-side of this, as Jim Kalb has pointed out, is that the federal government, being the highest and most authoritative level of our society, became the model for the whole society, so that America as a country has tended over time (with the help of a revolution carried out by the U.S. Supreme Court) to be seen as a mere abstraction, lacking any inherent substantive character, particularly any religious, cultural, or ethnic character, which most certainly was not the case at the time of the Founding. This makes it virtually impossible for modern Americans to articulate and preserve our actual historical cultural identity. America simply becomes, in James Fallows’ cheerfully sinister phrase, an “arena,” where different people and peoples seek to fulfill their desires. Or, as the neoconservatives put it, America becomes nothing but an idea, having no historic ethnic or religious character at all.

Traditionalists, including myself, believe that this process of abstraction might have been prevented or at least slowed if the Constitution had contained explicit references to the concrete nature of American society, especially its religious, moral, and ethnic dimensions. The Founders of course made many statements emphasizing the importance of these particularist facts about America, but they never became part of the official Founding documents. And once again, because the documents are the most authoritative thing, their abstractness has become the ruling paradigm for America as a whole.

Here therefore is something I’ve talked about doing for years, an experiment in re-imagining the American Founding. I’ve written a section that in my view could and should have been part of the original Constitution. I’ve based it on two famous quotes (while adding connective and explanatory text): John Jay’s remark in Federalist No. 2 about the ethnocultural unity of the American people, and John Adams’s comment about the indispensable place of morality and religion in our form of government.

This is only a first attempt, and I welcome criticism and suggestions.

United States Constitution, Article VII, Section 1 (appearing just before the closing section of the Constitution which lays out the procedures for ratification):

In ordaining this Constitution for the common government of the United States of America, we would be remiss if we did not gratefully acknowledge that divine Providence whose blessings have made this government possible. For he has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people—a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established their general liberty and independence. Without the commonalities that make us one people, and the shared struggle for liberty that has made us a free people, this government could not exist. Nor could it exist in a state of pure freedom. Since liberty requires for its continuance the voluntary restraint of our sinful natures, and since such restraint requires the willing subordination of ourselves to the Author of all Good, it is clearly to be seen that this Constitution is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Here are the two quotes on which I based the above paragraph:

John Jay, Federalist No. 2:

Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people—a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established their general liberty and independence.

President John Adams, October 11, 1798:

“[W]e have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 10, 2006 08:50 PM | Send